Editorial Reflections: J. Blake Scott and Lisa Melonçon

Our introductions across the first two volumes of RHM have consistently included reflections on our goals and journey as editors, and on the directions of the journal and growing field of RHM. As part of the issue that marks the journal's third year of publication, and that also marks the start of our fifth year of developing the journal, this introduction affords an especially opportune occasion for reflection.

Accordingly, we want to use this introduction to synthesize and extend our reflection about the journal and our editorial practice by sharing with you some of the things that we are most proud of and must remain attentive to: some (but not all) of the emergent topics taken up by conversations in the journal, some things to consider if you want to publish in RHM, and some future goals as we begin to move toward transitioning to new RHM editors.

Achievements and Ongoing Considerations

From the earliest planning stages for the journal, we have given a great deal of thought to the processes involved in editing a journal. Specifically, we wanted to intervene and change practices by productively responding to common problems of structure and practice in academic publishing. As discussed in the introductions to issues 1.3–4 and 2.3, in particular, we have embraced a transparent and inclusive ethos as editors. This had led to a number of resources, practices, and structures that we are proud of, including the following:

• • We have created an editorial leadership team that includes associate and assistant editors, a managing editorial assistant and interns, and an editorial board from various fields, institution types, and career stages;

• • We sponsor training and professional development opportunities for other scholars, most importantly by inviting junior scholars to coedit special issues of the journal in an apprenticeship model (see http://journals.upress.ufl.edu/rhm/announcement/view/9);

• • To supplement submission instructions to authors, we have created a series of open-access videos that explain key aspects of the journal's processes (on the journal's website), with topics, including our review process and decision letters, how the journal defines "rhetoric," submission types, and author interviews;

• • Our managing editorial assistant has created documentation for all of our internal processes, including the layers of review and editing;

• • We work extensively to help prospective authors develop manuscripts before and after submission to the journal, which involves answering follow-up questions about our detailed decision letters and revision directions;

• • We supplement the regular content of each issue with additional video/written interviews with authors that provide "behind-thescenes" explanations of research processes and/or implications for other health/medical stakeholders;

• • We publish a range of genre types beyond research articles, including dialogues, commentaries, review essays, bibliographic essays, "persuasion briefs" or white papers of rhetorical research for other audiences, and more recently, "ethical exposure" essays that explicitly take up ethical quandaries and conundrums encountered and negotiated in research practices.

In addition to these practices toward transparency and inclusion, we are proud of the following accomplishments:

• • Because of the flexibility of our publisher (thank you, UF Press) and a steady stream of submissions, we were able to transition from two double issues per year to four quarterly issues after just one year;

• • Using a double-anonymous peer review process, we have a rigorous acceptance rate of below 14%, an 8-week maximum turnaround from submission to decision, and detailed decision-letters that a number of submitting writers (including those with manuscripts rejected) have praised as among the most helpful they've received;

• • Although the journal began in 2018, it is already included in several key journal indexes (e.g., Project Muse, ProQuest, Academic OneFile, Academic Search Ultimate, Health Reference Center Academic);

• • Along with a number of other manuscript development efforts, we have tied the journal to a biennial national/international Rhetoric of Health & Medicine Symposium at which faculty and graduate students workshop their work with the goal of submitting to RHM or elsewhere.

All of this has been possible because of you—the vibrant and growing community of RHM scholars who were the catalyst for this...